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As Fritters

A fried dish of diced meat mixed with bread crumbs, onions, and eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

As Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the meat and soak an equal weight of bread crumbs in cold water.

  2. Cut the meat into small dice, ensuring a little fat is included.

  3. Squeeze the water from the bread crumbs.

Make the mixture

  1. In a pan, melt the butter or lard and sauté the chopped onion for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the soaked bread crumbs and stir until rather dry.

  3. Incorporate the diced meat, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg if desired.

  4. Stir until heated through, then gradually mix in the beaten eggs.

  5. Pour the mixture onto a dish to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into small egg‑like forms, coat with egg and bread crumbs, and fry until golden.

  2. Serve plain with an appropriate sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the fritters, with fat keeping them moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture, giving it a softer, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set on heating, holding the shape.
Butter or lard
Adds richness and fat for frying, promoting browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Squeeze the water from the bread crumbs. Excess water dilutes the mixture and makes it soft and hard to shape. Drying the crumbs and stirring them until rather dry lets the mixture hold together and fry properly.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, butter, onion, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, butter, onion, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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